Israel, China to Establish Formal Ties, Officials Say

Israel is on the verge of opening relations with China, a move that will bring to light the slow, secretive growth of a relationship that recently revolved around arms sales, officials said Thursday.

According to reports published in Hong Kong, Foreign Minister David Levy will travel to Beijing within two weeks to officially establish links with China, which since the collapse of the Soviet Union, is the last world power still to embrace communism.

Levy, in comments to reporters, said only that he was “not ready to discuss this.”

China maintains a tourist office in Tel Aviv; Israel has an office of its Academy of Science in Beijing. Both offices were established in 1990 with an eye to eventual conversion into embassies. Officials have traded visits for three months; Defense Minister Moshe Arens traveled to China in November in a move widely seen as paving the way for diplomatic links.

The establishment of relations continues Israel’s expansion of ties with countries that once formed a leftist bloc heavily favoring the Arab side in the Middle East conflict. The breakup of the Soviet-dominated East Bloc and the Soviet Union itself expanded Israel’s diplomatic reach into East Europe.

China’s motives are based on both diplomatic and military factors, Israeli observers say.

China, as a member of the U.N. Security Council, reportedly wants to play a role in the Middle East peace process now under way. Israel made recognition of the Jerusalem government a condition for participation of outsiders in the process, even in the status of mere observer.

China also has carried on a quiet trade with Israel in arms, recently purchasing an Israeli-produced air-to-air missile called the Python. China also has bought radar systems for jets and missiles. And Israel has helped China upgrade range-finders on its Soviet-style tanks.

Yitzhak Shichor, a China expert at Hebrew University, told the Jerusalem Report magazine that China sees Israel as an avenue to Western military technology. When Chinese hard-liners cracked down in 1989 on the student democracy movement in Tian An Men Square, Israel limited itself to issuing a condemnation, stopping short of ending arms sales.

For Israel, diplomatic ties with China will, perhaps, give it more direct influence in trying to reduce Chinese weapons deliveries to Arab neighbors. Beijing’s sale of CSS-2 missiles to Saudi Arabia in 1988 set off alarms here, and recent reports that China plans to sell Syria a research nuclear reactor has also caused concern.